Lot 25

Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, in Latin, in Rhaetian minuscule, decorated manuscript on vellum [Switzerland (perhaps Chur), late eighth or early ninth century]

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

part of a bifolium, 248mm. by 175mm., remains of double column, 20 lines in dark brown ink in a fine Rhaetian minuscule, 13 lines of uncials touched in faded yellow, two ornamental animal initials in green, yellow and orange: (i) an 'S' formed of entwining crane-like birds biting their own bodies (27mm. high), and (ii) a 'P' formed of the head and neck of a stylised stag with antlers and a knotwork design, the bowl terminating in a classical-style dolphin head with a spiky upright mane (46mm. high), trimmed at outer and lower edges with loss of some text from each, verso scuffed and discoloured, recto slightly discoloured where leaf was wrapped around spine of a book, else in good and presentable condition, hessian binding

Provenance

provenance

Bernard Breslauer; sold in 1977 to Bernard Rosenthal; Quaritch, Bookhands III, cat.1088 (1988), no.9; Schøyen MS 77.

Catalogue Note

text

Rhaetian script, named after the mountainous Roman province of Raetia around Chur, is perhaps the first observable cultural marker delineating the Swiss from the other populations of Europe. In the first century AD., Pliny the Elder relates how a part of the Celtic populations who had settled in the Po valley were driven by invading Gauls to follow an eponymous leader Raetus into the mountains of eastern and central Switzerland. They were briefly subjugated by Theodoric the Great in the early sixth century, but remained fiercely independent of outside influence. In 807, around the time that the present leaf was written, Charlemagne recognised the individuality of the region and appointed the bishop of Chur and then Hunfrid, margrave of Istria (d. after 808), as a count of the region. Attempts to identity Rhaetian material culture definitively have not produced conclusive results, but in Rhaetian script we have something distinctively Swiss.

Examples of the script are of extreme rarity: only 9 manuscripts and 15 fragments are recorded by Codices Latini Antiquiores VII and VIII (all but one fragment in institutional ownership). To these should be added the tiny fragments from a commentary on Matthew, c.800, now Schøyen MS 1764, and the handful of leaves and fragments from a liturgical manuscript of c.800 in a hand showing influences of Rhaetian minuscule, recovered from a Donaueschingen binding (Quaritch, Bookhands VIII, cat.1348, no.62) and now in two private collections.

The present leaves are a hitherto unrecognised fragment of Zurich, Staatsarchiv A.G.19, no.xxxviii (CLA. VII, no.1013), and contain Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job, 2:12-15 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 143, pp.67-68). Bernhard Bischoff compared their decorated initials to St.Gall MS 348 (The Sacramentary of Bishop Remedius of Chur, c.800), and there is also a striking resemblance to a copy of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great now in Monza Capitolare MS a.2[4] (CLA. III, 383; written "quite likely at Chur"). The dimensions of the Monza manuscript are 272mm. by 170mm. and fit well with the probable original dimensions of the leaves here. These may well have once been sister volumes.

literature

B. Bischoff, V. Brown and J. John, 'Addenda to Codices Latini Antiquores', Mediaeval Studies 54 (1992), p.286, as ninth century and "intentionally omitted", failing to note the other part in CLA. VII, no.1013